In 1812, the Grimm Brothers published the first edition of their famous collection of fairy tales (“Kinder- und Hausmärchen”) with its stories about Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and their fairy tale kin. Last February, to celebrate the 200-year anniversary, Harvard University hosted a convention and invited the assembled guests to consider what accounts for the timeless appeal of these abbreviated classics. My own answer: Fairy tales are good to think with.

As an example, consider the current brouhaha surrounding the La Jolla Playhouse’s staging of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale.” Given that the musical is set in China, Asian-American actors have objected that only two of 12 roles have gone to performers of Asian descent. On the other hand and apologetic, the producers have argued that the show is better because of colorblind casting and a crew of multiethnic actors.

Since “The Nightingale” is part of the La Jolla Playhouse’s Page to Stage program and still evolving, it’s hard to know how this controversy will eventually shake out; indeed, the Playhouse views the musical as a work-in-progress and hosts public discussions after each performance. That said, it may be obvious that the issue being discussed here (representation versus colorblindness) is a familiar one; for example, the very same topic will be taken up this fall when the Supreme Court considers affirmative action. My point is that fairy tales are a site for this discussion.

Indeed, it may seem surprising at first, but the world of Snow White and the Frog Prince and Rumpelstiltskin is often a heated zone where people push their particular agendas. Take the Grimm Brothers, for instance: Distressed by the occupation of their country by the French, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm advocated the recovery and telling of fairy tales as a patriotic gesture because they saw these ancient stories as expressions of the Volk and especially German. Or take Bruno Bettelheim, who saw these stories embodying Freudian developmental theories that parents should pay attention to; it is not without reason that he called his book on the fairy tales “The Uses of Enchantment.” Or take early feminists who, when they wanted to point to what was wrong with patriarchal culture, criticized Snow White’s passivity and objected that Disney’s Cinderella can’t even dress herself without the help of mice.

Hans Christian Andersen was certainly pushing his own agenda when he wrote “The Nightingale.” It was written at the height of the Romantic Movement when bohemians were turning establishment values upside down: so, Andersen celebrates peasants over nobility, children over adults, the countryside over the court, and so on. In a word, Andersen’s theme in this story is the Natural versus the Artificial. And his preference is made clear by contrasting a real nightingale with a clockwork nightingale, the one singing beautifully and spontaneously in the countryside while the other is mechanical and predictable and stupidly preferred by the fashionable set at the Emperor’s court.

This is the story taken up by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik (book and music) and Moises Kaufman (director) in the current musical version of “The Nightingale” at the La Jolla Playhouse. To be sure, this is a “loose translation” of Andersen’s tale and the production is still evolving, but, in general, this version adds a coming-of-age story to Andersen’s fervid advocacy of the Natural over the Artificial.